Brigham and Women's Hospital history

The Boston Lying-in Hospital merged with the Free Hospital for Women in 1966.

In 1975, BHW merged with the Peter Bent Brigham and the Robert B. Brigham Hospitals.

1979 – United States trials of cadaver renal transplantation with the first use of the immunosuppressant drug cyclosporine A, now standard therapy for organ transplant patients, begin at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and the University of Colorado.

In 1980 three of Boston’s oldest and most prestigious Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals - the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, the Robert Breck Brigham Hospital, and the Boston Hospital for Women – merged to form Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

1984 – The Brigham performs the first heart transplant in New England.

1985 The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, an organization co-founded by BWH cardiologist Bernard Lown, MD.

1990 – The Brigham performs the first adult lung transplant in Massachusetts.

1992 – The Brigham performs the first heart-lung transplant in Massachusetts.

Mass General Brigham was formerly known as Partners HealthCare when it was founded in 1994 by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital.

1995 – The Brigham performs the nation's first triple organ transplant, removing three organs from a single donor—two lungs and a heart—and transplanting them into three patients.

1996 – The Brigham becomes one of only 10 hospitals in the country to perform minimally invasive aortic valve surgery.

2000 – In what is believed to be a first in organ transplantation, the Brigham performs a quadruple transplant, harvesting four organs from a single donor—a kidney, two lungs and a heart—and transplanting them into four patients.

2001, BWH was one of the first hospitals in the nation to establish an independent Division of Sleep Medicine within the Department of Medicine.

2004 – The Brigham achieves another transplant first in the United States—five lung transplants in 36 hours.

2005 – The Brigham establishes the Center of Surgery and Public Health (CSPH), a joint program of Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

2006 BWH launched, in collaboration with the NIH and Amgen, the first Women’s Genome Health Study to find the genetic causes for the development of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and other common health disorders.

2007 BWH opened the city of Boston’s first Asian Renal Clinic to better serve the approximately 200,000 Asians living in the Boston area.

2008 The first patients are welcomed to the Carl J. and Ruth Shapiro Cardiovascular Center, as the Watkins Cardiovascular Clinic, which now combines Cardiovascular Medicine, Cardiac Surgery and Vascular Surgery in one location, officially opened in June.

2009 BWH and Mass General Hospital (MGH) open the Brigham and Women’s/Mass General Health Care Center at Patriot Place.

2011 In January, Brookside Community Health Center kicked off its 40th anniversary of serving the community by honoring the efforts of those who make a difference in Jamaica Plain and its surrounding neighborhoods.

2012 In July, Brigham and Women's Hospital was once again recognized as one of the nation's top hospitals, ranking ninth in the 2012 United States News & World Report Honor Roll of America's Best Hospitals.

2013 – Brigham researchers found that using checklists in the operating room improves performance during a crisis; teams using checklists were 74% less likely to miss key life-saving steps than those working from memory alone.

2014 In January, BWH announced the launch of the Heart & Vascular Center—a fully integrated and aligned service dedicated to delivering life-giving breakthroughs for patients.

2015 In May, BWH launched a new Center of Excellence—The Lung Center—and The Lung Research Center to provide the highest level of personalized pulmonary and thoracic surgery care to patients.

2016 TIME named Raj Panjabi, MD, MPH, Division of Global Health Equity, among the 100 Most Influential People in the World for his work as co-founder of Last Mile Health, a charity that brings medical care to some of the most remote corners of Liberia.

2017 Investigators in the Channing Division of Network Medicine and the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine discovered 13 new genetic regions associated with COPD, including four that had not previously been associated with any type of lung function.

2018 Mass General Brigham and Boston Medical Center, in partnership with the NIH, announced the launch of the All of Us Research Program, a bold effort to gather data from 1 million or more people, with the goal of accelerating research and improving health.

2019 Sari Reisner, ScD was appointed Director of Transgender Research in the section of Men’s Health, Aging, and Metabolism, a unit within the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Hypertension.